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DFS reupholsters its financial system
Case study: Furniture retailer calls time on number crunching

By Julian Goldsmith

Published: Tuesday 17 April 2007

Furniture retailer DFS has integrated its finance and payroll operations into one system, making financial reports much easier to produce and making it easier for users to manipulate data.

The result is a much more streamlined accounts department, especially at the times of year when the retailer has to take on casual staff to cope with the increase in sales.

When the retailer's existing payroll software provider wound up its support agreement, DFS financial director Bill Barnes decided to revamp the whole financial reporting system.

Barnes said: "DFS had been thinking for a while about the need for a system with more powerful reporting tools and ways of automating processes. As our business grew, it became apparent that we needed a finance system that could grow with it.

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"The catalyst which galvanised us to make the change came when we had to replace our payroll system within a finite timescale. This became an opportunity for also replacing the finance systems to provide the flexibility we were looking for, and to integrate payroll with finance." The retailer chose OpenAccounts and OpenPeople from CedarOpenAccounts, which sent in a team of consultants to collaborate with DFS end users in the design of the system.

Barnes said: "One challenge was to completely redesign all of our accounting codes and structures from scratch to provide more flexibility in reporting. Fortunately we achieved this very early on in the project which got the project off to a flying start."

Already, the retailer has been able to make financial information easily accessible to end users who are not tech-savvy, allowing a richer knowledge of trading performance to spread throughout the company.

Barnes added: "Reporting is so much more flexible. Reports can now be designed and built by the end users which has lead to many more reports being produced straight off the system, rather than having to manipulate data in spreadsheets.

The next phase of the implementation will involve the retailer using this financial data to improve store and logistics operations.

Barnes said: "We are now looking at how the greater flexibility of the new system can help us automate manual processes within our finance function and in the wider business where finance interacts with our stores and logistics operations.

"Although we changed some ways of working in the first phase, we are only now really moving from replicating processes on the new system, to redesigning them. Partly, this is because it's easier to do this now we have experience of what the system is capable of."